Name: Catherine Eibner
Screen Name: ceibner
Personal Blog’s: http://www.cybner.com.au/, http://wpmu.thepodcastnetwork.com/geekgirlblogs/
Social Networks:
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ceibner
Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=564304866
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ceibner
FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/ceibner
Current Employment:  Director of Cybner : Cybner is a Microsoft Certified Partner for Microsoft Dynamics. We specialise in CRM implementation & customisation, with a unique focus on Integrating CRM with underlying Line of Business applications. The Cybner team works with our clients to gain efficiencies through reviewing current business processes & systems, addressing issues & bottlenecks and developing long term internal training & skills development plans for their teams.
Location/country: Sydney Australia

Originally, it was so that I knew that I had all the little things I had worked out how to do in one place. Then as I started to blog more and receive comments, I realised that other people were also trying to work out the same issues – so tried to post on things that either aren’t clear in the documentation for a product, or things that I find need a more detailed explanation. I also get a lot of value out of reading other peoples blogs, especially if I am trying to find the resolution to a technical problem. I just wanted to be able to help someone else, the way that so many bloggers have helped me.

It varies between Geek Girl Blog promotion, updates as to where I may be presenting, to detailed technical posts. It really depends on what I am currently working on, and what else is going on.

I try to blog regularly. Again this varies depending on what I am currently working on. You can always see when I have been deeply involved in the technical aspects of a project as my posts reflect the technology I am working with at the time.

I also run a Podcasting series specifically for Women in IT which can be found on TPN & the  GeekGirlBlogs site directly. These are normally released monthly.

I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Bronwen Zande at last years Tech Ed by Frank Arrigo, as I was complaining to him that there wasn’t enough support for the geek girls working in the IT community. Bronwen had the awesome idea to start the Geek Girl Blogs site and as a result – the site was created, and I am now a Geek Girl Blogger myself!

Today I delivered some work to a client to get a major piece of work completed. The client was 100% happy and there were only a couple of minor things to fix. They have requested more work but that will have to wait until after other jobs are completed. From there I drove to the school convention and picked up a car full of athletes who I have been coaching. We headed of to St Lucia University campus for a 5PM start of the athletic meet.

Unfortunately due to my “childishness” I broke my phone screen and I didn’t have any other camera with me. I did take a couple of shots of my main man Drew running the 1500 metre with someone else's camera though.

Drew cleaned up tonight. Although he could have ran a much faster 1500 than he did I made him run a slow race to save himself for the other events. He followed my instructions exactly. Ran into second place within the first 100 metres and sat right on the heels of that guy for 400 metres before hitting him with a 10 metre clear burst on the 2nd back straight. Settling back down the the same pace he ran with the 10 metre lead for another full lap. Then he picked up the pace and ran harder drawing away to a 50 metre lead. He held this then right into the main finishing straight and then turned on his sprint for the last 50 metres winning by an easy 75 metres or so. I think he could have won by close to a full lap but he was very good and ran our race plan exactly. This was good because he was straight into the 100 metres – though because his was the lat 100 metre heat / final he had time to prepare. I had 2 runners in the 100 metres and I played the waiting game as long as possible to keep them out of the chill breeze. I walked them to the start last of all the runners every time, warmed them up at the back of the staging area with some calisthenics, stretches and short sprints. No other athletes were as well prepared so I was happy with that. Caleb came second in his U16 100 metres and drew came in first or second – it was a photo finish and we haven’t been told the result yet.

From there it was to the 200 metres and Cassie. She has suffered terribly from self confidence, and tonight I finally learnt that she didn’t think I was happy with her progress. Well she came in a solid 2nd with a strong final 50 metres and she now knows I am happy with her performance. Her grandfather also told me tonight that her mother died in a car accident when she was 3 which is why she lives with her grandparents. Anyway I did the same thing with Cassie, taking her over to the start a good 5 minutes after everybody else was already there, knowing she had 3 races in front of hers. I kept her in her track suit right until the last minute warming her up on the track while we waited. She ran very well and I am proud of her improvement since I have been coaching her.

The 400 was next and this was going to be interesting. I had 3 runners here, Drew, Jemimah and Esther. Esther ran first and I didn’t get to see her start as I was busy with the others. However she came in second also and she really hung on well in the last 100 metres. She went out a little strong in the opening 100 but it worked in her favour in the end. Jemimah and Drew actually ran in the same race as there were only 2 girls competing at her age group of over 16 and there were enough spare spots on the track for the 2 girls to run with the 5 or 6 boys. She ran a very good race and came in first. Drew however blitzed the boys field here. I was standing at the start line with all the timekeepers and they couldn’t believe his opening 100 metres. From lane 2, in that opening 100 metres he had passed all the other runners and was in front. From there he just pulled away and won by about 30 metres. A very impressive run and he wasn’t even puffing after he finished. I’m thinking the next Usain Bolt!

Next were a couple of 100 and 200 metre finals for races where they had had heats. None of mine were in this as their races had all been finals. The 800 was next and I had Thomas and Breanna in this. Breanna ran a very good race to our plan and finished 4th but only a few metres behind 3rd and maybe 20 back from first. Well done. Thomas didn’t follow my instructions. I had told him to run the first 100 in his lane and slot in behind the first runner on to the back straight. Instead he went to the front and the two of them at the front drew away with Thomas pacemaking to about 10 metres out. Unfortunately this boy was in the open class and Thomas wasn’t even supposed to be racing him. With 350 to go this boy gained 10 metres on Thomas with a pace increase and I had told Thomas not to up his pace until 300 to go. Thomas however was spent by this time so when he lifted on the back straight he tired too quickly. Going into the last 200 he was 25 metres behind the first boy which didn’t matter as he was still leading his U16 class. However his nearest rival was now only 10 metres behind and closing fast. As they hit the front 100 the other boy passed him. Thomas lifted into a sprint and it was a seesaw neck and neck but the other boy had more left in the tank and the last 5 metres saw him take the win. Still a good run that Thomas put everything he had into and a silver isn’t anything to be ashamed of. I do think he could have won it though.
From there to the relays. Too big and strong the other teams were. Our under 16s team Caleb, Liam, Nathan and Thomas ran really well with a credible second but never looked like beating the first team. Still a great run by all 4. The open boys team consisted of Drew to open, Dean and Cailen to follow and Coen to finish. Drew gave us a 10 metre lead over the first 100 metres. Dean lost all of that to the next team and a bit more and Cailen lost the rest and a bit more so we were about 10 metres behind into the final straight though just clear of third. Coen ran a super fast sprint and was gaining rapidly on the first place. However he could not pull him back and we lost by 5 metres or so. Our girls team had to forfeit as one of our runners was too sick to race and had in fact gone to bed. We had not registered Cassie as a reserve so could not use her.

I had an absolute blast coaching these fine young athletes. For me the best part was seeing just how much the difference I could make in preparing them well, setting their mental state prior to each race and getting them onto the track totally focused on running their hardest. Some of their competitors were looking around, joking with spectators and supporters and skylarking amongst themselves. None of them warmed up properly. My kids were all told to keep that nervous energy in check and store it up and use it in the race, and to ignore what anybody said to them except the starter. Almost with out exception they followed these instructions (and most of the pre race instructions I had given them a couple of days ago for preparation earlier on in the day as well. I am super proud of them all! Now girls basketball comp tomorrow – knockout so we have to win 2 games to get to a final and hopefully win that as well. Its gonna be fun!

our boys team played their first game yesterday. The other team was quite a bit better then them and this was evident before the game. I think this overawed them at first and i had to call a time out 3 minutes in. I told them they were playing like girls and to stop being nice. The rest of the game they played really hard and i was really proud of their efforts. The defence was very good most of the time though we need to work on rebounds. We also need to work on offence.

As hurricane Gustav hits New Orleans we are tracking its progress with more than just curiosity from this side of the world. For all the news step by step from the Zipa building in Poydras Street in New Orleans check out the www.gustavbloggers.com website. Our domain name registrars DirectNic are located there. After there fantastic work to stay online during Katrina we determined to stay with them and have increased our domain name holdings with them since then. They have expanded also and now have massive redundancy and server centres in Chicago, Houston and Naples, Florida so they are not expecting any outages.

I note with sadness that this hurricane has already costs many deaths in the outlying islands of Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba and Dominican Republic.

No time to say them.

But what the heck here I go anyway – warning rant begins!

American politics. Short thought - storm in a teacup. The two sides are so bitterly argumentative (generally) and so closely alike (generally) politically anyway that the whole thing is a bit of a joke from the outside looking on. Lets just have a little look at the major external global policies (I am not conversant with internal American politics so much).

Oil – and Iraq. They are not leaving – they are staying. Obama or McCain – ones says he wont go, the other cant no matter what he says.

Money. No president can control the Federal Reserve Bank. America’s economy is on the brink of disaster and only continual creative accounting and loose money policy keeps them from collapsing. The fact that American dollars are the black market economy standard around the world says more about the quantity of cash outside of the continental states than it does about the strength (or weakness) of the dollar.

Global warming (or not). Okay temperatures are rising. Ice is melting, etc. No one disagrees. Does this constitute “global warming”? Yes in the strict definition of those 2 words. The earth is warming (very slightly). Is this an environmental disaster like never before. Categorically no. It has happened before. This bad? no one really knows for sure. Will we survive? Yes. Does it really matter what president is in the USA? not really. After all the USA won’t even ratify the Kyoto protocol. There are two major schools of thought on global warming neither of which can agree. End of day this is not as bad as the oil crisis of the 70s (I remember that) and Americans wont change their lives much because the president changes.

Bigotry. Americans have that down pat. Generally speaking. Of course all the nice American people I know aren’t bigoted – at all! Or at least not intentionally. Yet this is the nation that has the large majority of its school children (and adults) who cant locate major capital cities let alone countries on a map of the world. So for those enlightened enough to be reading my blog you are excused and I certainly don’t tar you with this generic brush. The rest won’t come here anyway. But most Americans cannot seem to see that the way they represent themselves, their attitudes about their country and others show bigotry of ignorance in most cases or arrogance at least. Go to St Louis or Atlanta and tell me there is no racial bigotry inside USA – and where is the political where with all to deal with that?

Political systems. the USA has a political system that allows choice. However at the end of the day that choice has been screwed down to this is the way its going to be with some very minor differences. The two political parties are largely alike in most ways. the system is controlled by a congress which counts vote buying with money and power and has virtually nothing to do with representative government – let alone the mathematical problems associated with proportional representation (look up the Alabama paradox for that one!)

Ok end of rant – normal programming will now resume.

Oh and I am interested in comments – and thoughtful ones. If you are going to just sneer at my opinions and not provide reasoned debate than I will just delete your comments – that is my right.

Pictures courtesy of Capital Capitalism.

I have had such a heavy workload lately that about 2 weeks ago I planned an entire day off – knowing I would need it and the family would be needing me. So yesterday was locked out in my diary as being work free. well it didn't entirely work out as thanks to Optus screwing around with my plans I had to go and do a wireless internet install and local network setup for a client in their home. 3 hours later,  5 PCs online, mostly patched for windows updates, AVG 8 installed and updated, and Live Mesh installed for some users and synchronising backups. I left for this really early so we were able to leave the house and be ready to go at lunch time! We stopped on the highway for Maccas and KFC for lunch 15 minutes after leaving. hen it was back ont he road again and off to Mapleton Falls National Park. This is part of the great Sunshine coast walks and I was on a recce for a great bike ride that we are planning.

I had used the camera heavily the previous two days taking photos for the geek girls dinner and then for the missions fund raising dinner. Check the photos and the 3D photosynth out of the dinner. So the camera batteries were on the charger and I only had my mobile phone camera. Still I took some reasonable shots. The panoramic picture picture above was created using Live Photo Galleries cool panoramic feature from the falls look out platform. I would estimate that the height was about 100 metres straight down. I also made a photosynth of the same pictures – check it out – it is way cook and allows you to zoom in heaps.

We took heaps of pictures on the rain forest walk all up on Flickr. Here's some fun ones of all our shoes and then all our faces. Click the photos to be taken through to Flickr and the rest of the photos.

After that we headed out to Coolum Beach for nachos and doner kebabs by the beach. The children jumped waves and played for a while and then it was time to go home. I relaxed with Jude for a bit before settling into code for a few hours before hitting the sack. All the Coolum beach photos are on Flickr also.